Tag Archive for 'manifesto'

National legislation with global impacts

Published on January 19, 2012 in Adrian's tech blog. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

The blackout by many of the big names in response to proposed US legislation isn’t the first time law makers and pioneers have faced up to each other, and its also not the first time that national legislation, attempting to target a national issue, has had potentially significant impacts on the running of the international .

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote about the being posed by the US proposal for a domestic “Internet kill switch“; if the US were to switch off the US portions of the Internet it would not just deny UK citizens access to common services but may also kill entire portions of the UK’s internet access because of the global nature of internet peering.

There is no simple answer to this. Of course national Governments must act in their own self-interests but when it comes to the Internet the impact is seldom felt by local citizens alone. , thus far, has been largely successful in developing a fairly egalitarian, global phenomenon outside of national governance but we are entering a new world where national security, health and prosperity depend on the future running of the Internet – this makes it politically very important, not least to key knowledge economies like the UK.

US citizens have typically been more aware of this than many other nations – the importance of net-neutrality is a deeply emotional, heart-felt thing in the US but has so far been largely missed by UK citizens and is totally ignored in Ireland where the lack of transparency is actively marketed by the largest operator.

The reaction to the Internet blackout in response to the US proposals was interesting. It seemed to mark the awakening of debate beyond the US. I didn’t hear much from politicians outside of the US but the interest from commentators went beyond simply bemoaning that they couldn’t look things up on Wikipedia. When Jonathan Agnew from BBC’s Test Match Special comments about the importance of the internet and the problems that may introduce on Twitter, then it must have become mainstream.

My own position is that while copyright of course needs to be protected, the ramifications of any loosely drafted legislation can have far wider impacts, and the implementation of internet legislation specifically will always have implications far beyond national boundaries. Any Government considering a move like this today has a responsibility to world citizens and not just the self-interests of one sector of their local economy.

Today requires a generation of Internet-savvy politicians who can find new world solutions to old world problems like copyright.

Speech to INCA workshop – Community Broadband is Dead

Published on July 19, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

What follows is the transcript of a speech I gave to INCA’s workshop held on the 19th July at the Frontline Club. This was a difficult speech to give, but one I felt I had to give.

The speech was given as part of the events opening “provocations” to seed debate, so it was just 5 minutes long. To help clarify some points, I’ve added footnotes to the text – hover over the numbers to see some of my clarifications.

-

It saddens me – that I feel it necessary to say what I’m about to say but it does come from the heart.

There is no such thing as “ ” – its dead, gone.

Or rather “community broadband” as its often described – a neatly delineated, easily identifiable scheme run by ardent enthusiasts on the fringes – is dead.

This is an image that perhaps fitted the initial wave of broadband schemes a decade ago, when the policy was to fund regional procurement programmes and target wireless and satellite solutions at the rural fringes.

That ended in 2005 when Tony Blair stood up at his party conference and announced that broadband was done – or at least I thought it ended then

To celebrate 10 years of unevolving community broadband, it appears we are to do the exact same thing again, if the the models appearing from BDUK are to be believed[1] – either a very brave move based on something none of us have spotted or one detached from any sense of ambition or reality.

In the beginning communities clambered across church roofs, installed wireless aerials, and were the pioneers of broadband in rural areas – over 200 at the peak.

Today, communities recognise they still live in broadband unfriendly areas, but they also recognise that the technology is more complex this time and the business case much longer and more difficult to make.

That doesn’t mean, though, that they can simply be patted on the head and told not to worry. Many, many communities – wise from their experience – know they need to be involved if they are to have an infrastructure which meets their ambitions.

Right now, very few know what form that role will take – demand stimulation, contracting to pre-orders, helping with way-leaves, investing their own money, and, yes, possibly digging their own trenches – but they know they must be stakeholders, sat around the table as equals.

Those from the industry that have overcome what might be called the Rumsfeld “unknown-unknowns”[2] and have started to do the really hard thinking – and I include Fujitsu, Geo and BT as much the likes of Rutland – have realised that the traditional resource constrained, lean and efficient relationship with customers can’t support the business case – the take-up and cost-savings necessary to deliver long-term solutions in any geography.

A much more collaborative relationship is needed, working with communities as partners, developing what Kees Rovers calls the “us feeling”[3] – but this is a very hard thing for a traditional telecoms company to do – its not obvious how you can make it scale, for example – but they know that to be a successful player they need to find answers.

Which is why you find senior executives from major corporations turning up to village halls – this has created a growing, common vocabulary and a space in which a dialogue between stakeholders can occur and a balance sought.

Local authorities also often turn up to these meetings – they have the equally hard goals of reducing costs, transforming the way they deliver services, while ensuring they have a competitive local economy

But I’d have to say that, in my experience, few councils have moved much beyond a strategy which involves “shovelling the money towards an industrial giant in the hope it just makes the bad problems go away”.

I don’t blame them – this is very hard, far from their core competence, and the advice they often receive is contradictory, rapidly changing and detached.

However, where the shift has happened its been quite brilliant to watch – my own county, Oxfordshire, has gone through a lot of real pain to move from an overly simplistic model towards one which understands , understands the nature of the problem, and is beginning to understand the nature of the solution.

It certainly wasn’t easy for them – and they deserved to feel proud of the progress they made – at least until BDUK decided to become misty-eyed for the past and shifted their policy from localism to the centralism of the last .[4]

As a result we now have a situation where the industry is increasingly able to sit around the table with communities, work with them towards the holy grail of long term solutions which scale and meet both sides ambitions and capabilities.

While, it seems, at a completely different table sits the voice of BDUK, advising councils, and closing out many of those who may know a thing or two about this space.[5]

The reason this comes from the heart ought to be clear to most of you. Like many in this room, I’ve spent a very long time trying to figure out how to deliver sustainable and universal broadband. There are very, very good people in BDUK who have been part of this process – and from the outset those people sat around the same table as the rest of us, seeking the same solutions, and for that they garnered a lot of respect and goodwill from just about everyone.

In the last few months, however, much of that goodwill has evaporated. I’m yet to find a single person active in this space – industry or community – that thinks the framework is a good idea – I have found one or two in the public sector but even there, support is far from universal.

So, to the leadership of BDUK I say this – stop listening to price tag of the advice, and start listening to the experience within your organisation. Only then can you properly guide local councils – and recover your relationship with the parts of the the industry that matter and with communities.[6]

And more widely in the public sector I say this – Community Broadband, as you know it, is dead!

Lets start afresh and recognise that all forms of future broadband are in a sense Community Broadband – long live community broadband! Thank you[7]

-
Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)
  1. All BDUK models and the advice they seem to give to local authorities talks of FttC to much of the country, typically based on BT products and services, with wireless and satellite services for the rest. Don’t assume this means BT are in some way complicit – I suspect they are as frustrated as everyone else↵
  2. As anyone who has been involved in building a next generation access network will attest, the process is a complex journey which only begins after the first step. Operators whose experience is limited to core networks or first generation broadband are yet to understand this complexity. Experienced major operators have found this as much as smaller, newer organisations – those that understand the complexities of are a clear subset of the industry.↵
  3. Kees Rovers is the man behind the OnsNet network in The Netherlands. His approach is defined by 7-pillars, necessary principles for a successful broadband project. The “Us feeling” is a sense the community is in some way a stakeholder, engaged in its delivery.↵
  4. BDUK’s expectation that local authorities should use their central framework to find a single partner to deliver their local broadband plan has in many cases stopped the very difficult but necessary thinking being done by many local authorities, and pandered to those that wanted any easy process.↵
  5. The BDUK framework excludes almost every organisation with experience of building next generation networks, in some cases by what appears to be carefully crafted rules targeting specific organisations. There is also frustration being expressed by a growing number of people who feel excluded from dialogue with BDUK – meetings cancelled, concerns ignored, and a sense the dialogue has simply ended.↵
  6. I don’t know what changed inside BDUK but its clear something changed. From the outset there was a very fluid and constructive dialogue between most people involved in this space – at one time I might meet people within BDUK almost weekly. That phase has very clearly gone now. Personally I’ve not had a dialogue with BDUK of any merit in some months, and much of the advice I and many others have offered in the past has clearly been set aside.↵
  7. I’d like to think that its not too late for BDUK to repair their relationship with the industry and communities but time is certainly running out. A year has gone by, and the framework will absorb much of the next one. Communities and the industry want to make progress more quickly, with greater ambition, and with more consensus – BDUK should be part of that process, and not  allow themselves to become a competing factor as we move forward.

    This remains a very challenging goal but the policy can’t be a success if the majority of stakeholders are at odds with the policy delivery team. The original goals need to be restored; this process which will surely only deliver an efficient way to spend money needs to encompass the goal of becoming a broadband superpower again – and that will need everyone.↵

Everything should be made as simple as possible. . .

Published on July 3, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

The debate about what’s going wrong with the policy is becoming quite complex, messy and somewhat emotional.

For me, the key policy of making the UK the best “superfast” (meaning > 24 Mbps) broadband market in Europe is the right one. Delivering that in tandem with the bill and while supporting SMEs couldn’t be better. These are all things that get my total support – and I hear very few detractors (quite the opposite).

The rub for many people seems to be in the delivery – a matter of policy implementation and interpretation. A key example (totem?) is the framework which contains what appears to be little more than lip service to the policy – an opening few paragraphs that give the appearance of supporting the policy followed by a long list of qualifying criteria which, one by one, chip away at the goals until there is almost nothing left – even the stated objective of super-fast broadband seems to have been discarded, or at best re-framed, along the way.

There have been conspiracy theories that this is a stitch up between and BT but I don’t support that for one minute. To begin with, I suspect that the framework isn’t something BT would prefer to support but will pragmatically go along with as its what’s on offer.

Einstein is quoted as saying:

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.“

For me this is a case of a very complex problem that’s been reduced beyond the possible degree of simplicity – the framework assumes a level of homogeneity of technology, scale, business model, financing, risk, partnership and so forth that just isn’t possible – BUT it is much simpler to manage.

The original policy objectives appear to have got lost in a drive to find the optimal process – or at least the one that’s the least bother to oversee.

This isn’t a time for a difficult u-turn – this is a time for politicians to crack the whip and make sure the policy is implemented as stated.

There are very good people inside BDUK, and they didn’t suddenly switch off. Something has happened that group at the top – whether it was the change of management or the influence of KPMG but it is something that can be corrected – but time is not on anyone’s side. One or the other or both need refocussing, and very soon.

What’s happening to the Big Society in broadband?

Published on March 25, 2011 in Adrian's tech blog. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

For many who’ve been campaigning to get better into the UK’s rural areas the ’s  policy agenda is a very welcome opportunity to really make a difference, to fix this problem once and for all.

With ’s programme under way and DEFRA announcing £20m to support rural broadband things seem to be moving in the right direction – but there are some major challenges ahead.

There is a clear sense that politicians are not just espousing the big society principals, they really believe in it - just look to people like Rory Stewart, Peter Aldous and Jesse Norman, and of course .

The challenges, to my mind, lie elsewhere.

Generally, public servants have spent the last decade and more centralising – local government had become a delivery body for , spending money as they were told, micro-managed from above.

means the direction of travel between local and central government is being put in reverse; the thinking should now be coming from local authorities in tune with their communities, and with the support of central government

This is very hard if you’ve not done it before

Whitehall civil servant’s natural belief is that they have the big picture.

Local government staff are quite naturally risk averse when confronted with new and difficult decisions which may affect the whole of their community.

It will take some time before Whitehall feels comfortable supporting rather than leading, and it will take equally long before local government feels comfortable sitting in the driving seat, guided by their communities.

In this climate, it is perhaps no surprise that the thinking  influencing some local broadband plans is drawing from the known, and appears to be taking those local authorities towards a traditional that will ensure only the biggest, most traditional businesses win,  and where community engagement is limited to little more than free marketing support.

Perhaps not surprising but it is disappointing given that the Big Society is a key strand of the Government’s policy agenda.

In the way that people like Jesse Norman introduced new thinking which led to a new wave of localism in , there is now a need to adopt some new thinking which will lead to localism in our digital society.

And this new thinking isn’t radical as in hippy – its radical as in different – its tried and tested in countries that have found the will to move on, and its has room in it for big companies, public bodies as well as communities – in a respectful partnership.

Successful local broadband strategies need to seek a balance:

  • Which permits the safety of an established major operator while underpinning the heart and soul of a community initiative
  • Which allows industrial scale investment while respecting the local stakeholders at the helm
  • Which attract the best national and international services while encouraging local services attuned to the community

There is no shortage of communities wanting to become stakeholders their digital future.

There are respected and experienced organisations that can provide the support that can focus that demand into action.

There are organisations willing to help raise funding to support the demand.

All that’s needed is for the processes already in motion to be encouraging of this demand rather the dismissive, and for the industry to try something a little radical.

The reward? A new contract with communities which delivers innovation, investment and opportunities. What’s not to like?

How successful would Finland’s broadband policy be here?

Published on September 11, 2010 in Adrian's tech blog. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

At the NextGen Road-show event in Edinburgh this week, Professor Michael Fourman gave a fascinating talk on the special challenges for delivering in Scotland. At the heart of his work were some maps which very effectively demonstrated the impact the Finnish ’s policy might have on some of the more remote areas of Scotland as well as a GIS-based estimate of how much it might cost to deliver it.

Heavily summarised, Finland’s policy says that there should be a  back-haul connection within 2km of any ; and they define a as an area containing at least 70 people per square kilometre.

I was left wondering how effective this policy might be across England and Wales, as well as Scotland.  I don’t have to hand the core network details that Prof. Fourman used to calculate the costs of delivering the policy nor the time just at the moment to build the shortest-distance spanning tree model he used, so I’ve restricted myself to simply looking at where Finland’s policy might reach that the market won’t.

Finland's broadband policy applied to England & Wales The map (click on it to see it life-size) depicts in green the areas which the policy would deliver a fibre to, and the black is the extent of market-led next generation broadband according to DCLG’s 65% model. A first glance says “so what – doesn’t seem very impressive”. However this is where maps have the power to overstate a problem. Using the 2001 census, there would be 11,946,819 (don’t you love computer precision!) English and Welsh people who remained without broadband when 65% of the UK was already enjoying it. Applying the Finnish policy reduces this figure to just 275,451 – or in other words, increases the reach of from 65% to 94% of the population.

The Finnish broadband policy would reach 94% of the English and Welsh population

Of course this is academic without the costs that Prof. Fourman generated, but it is a powerful example of how the village pump model that Rory Stewart MP is advocating. So how many of these green areas are close to a Primary School, Library or GP whose existing broadband connections could be upgraded and converted into a Village Pump?

Rating success or land-grabs?

Published on August 31, 2010 in Adrian's tech blog. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

I’ve one final piece to get off my chest about the VOA’s “clarification” on business rates applied to networks, and its about the upside-down nature of the rules and how the new framework exacerbates an already difficult situation.

The old rules taxed fibre owners for homes passed regardless of whether anyone bought a service. The new rules almost triple the tax but apply it only to homes connected.

So the old rules penalised investment but the tax could be mitigated against a successful drive to build take-up. The new rules still penalise take-up but now mitigate in favour of land-grabs to keep other providers out rather than in driving take-up – and the ones which are most heavily penalised are likely to be companies specialising in green field developments where they are unlikely to achieve much less than 100% of the homes as the default telecoms infrastructure. (remember BT has special treatment, so this only applies to alternative providers).

The new VOA rules would seem to imply an almost tripling of the tax bill for green field network builders.

The new made it clear it wanted to encourage, enforce if necessary, infrastructure sharing but these new rules encourage a more monopolistic mindset – build to stop others building, and make just enough revenue to cover the costs – oh, and make the architecture so esoteric it could never support infrastructure competition anyway.

The VOA has shown no signs that they are even beginning to understand anything the Government has said since coming to power. Had they chosen to develop rules which moulded the rates system around Government policy they might have recommended a system which:

  • Reduced or eliminated business rates on new fibre investments in Ofcom Market 1 areas where there is currently no investment rather than the opposite
  • Favoured led “” smaller-scale networks over national carriers rather than the opposite
  • Penalised idle assets and favoured shared and used assets rather then the opposite

I try to avoid clear attacks like this my blog but the VOA appears to have worked against the key policies of BIS, DCMS, DCLG and DEFRA, while creating a framework so arbitrary and complex that the Treasury can’t possibly have any confidence in any figures estimating the revenue it will generate.

The National Audit Office was scrapped for a less fulsome opposition – can we hope the VOA has a similar fate awating?

Rant over.

I’d really like to thank Pauline Rigby for joining me on our journey to understand the VOA rules. We both felt uncomfortable writing politically charged articles like this one of mine but it was clear this was a major issue for the industry we both care about.

Ambition is the new agenda

Published on July 18, 2010 in Adrian's tech blog. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Last Thursday I attended the ’s Industry Day where they laid out their key policy framework and work programme for and the . If you hung around just long enough to hear , and Caroline speak, and with only one ear on what was being said while you rushed to submit your copy you might be forgiven for thinking this was another platform where the new blames the old for a delay in delivering on a promise – BUT you’d be VERY wrong.

Before the election two phrases kept cropping up – “We’re in this together” and “”. For me, Thursday’s event was possibly the first time I’d seen a concrete example of what that meant in real terms. What was announced wasn’t a policy which handed large sums of money to a semi-state organisation to proscribe how better broadband would be delivered from on high. Instead we heard from Ministers explaining what their role was in defining and delivering the future, what we could reasonably expect from , and what needed to come from others.

We heard how the Government will remove barriers to investment and create the structures necessary to support local communities in defining their own broadband futures, and how industry would be encouraged to support that process, enabling a smart division of skills that could solve all but the most intractable of broadband problems.

And we heard from a Minister with a vision of 50 Mbps symmetrical services reaching most people by the end of this delivered by the combined efforts of Government, industry and communities. I suspect that sent a few shivers through Whitehall but knowing the people involved I’m sure they are universally excited by the challenge.

Starting immediately is a month long consultation seeking paper solutions to three paper broadband problems. These will be used to shape the Government’s support programmes, ensuring both commercial and organisations receive the right kind of support in the right manner. At the same time, the English regions and the devolved assemblies are each being asked to construct a long-list of areas they want to benefit from next generation broadband. From this, Broadband Delivery UK () will announce the location of three real market testing projects in September and begin a tendering process to find the right mix of commercial and players to make them a reality. From these projects they aim to learn about the impact of state aid, forms of broadband registration and demand stimulation, and infrastructure sharing open access models.

While this is going on, BD-UK will be negotiating with the EU towards a national state aid agreement which for the first time since dial-up modems were in short trousers will provide clear guidance to local authorities on what they can and can’t do.  State Aid legislation has been a bigger block to UK investment in broadband than almost any other, with state sponsored projects crippled by fear of challenge or paralysed by years of rulings before they can begin work. The first roadblock gone – and with it gone, a new process will be in place to unlock the public networks which already reach many of our most remote communities.

Secondly work will push ahead on infrastructure sharing including the opening up of BT’s ducts as well as other assets like the sewers and culverts. This is a knotty problem and not a panacea but an important element in making the UK an easier place to invest in. Second roadblock going.

With all this work hopefully complete – the lessons from the market testing projects learnt, infrastructure hopefully opened up, and state aid put to bed – the Government will announce the main programme of work next year to support local delivery of super-fast broadband, supported by what they termed “mid-level aggregation” to make it easier for the service providers to link to homes and businesses. This time next year we will be well prepared for the main challenge ahead.

Did I hear all the answers on Thursday?No
Does that worry me?Quite the opposite – I’m relieved!
Am I excited?Absolutely!

For the first time in a long while, ambition is back on the agenda. Whether we actually achieve at least 50Mbps symmetrically to every corner of the UK doesn’t matter nearly so much as the way it will change the shape and aspirations of an industry, and the people and businesses that it serves. The journey matters as much as the arriving, and we are on our way.

The Constituencies without hope of NGA

Published on May 4, 2010 in Adrian's tech blog. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The release of the Ordinance Survey data allowed me to play around with the Department for Communities & Local (DCLG) data on where they believe next generation is most likely to appear. Here’s my league table of the top 25 Parliamentary Constituencies least likely to see investment in :

ConstituencyRedAmberGreen
Dwyfor Meirionnydd Co Const100.00%0.00%0.00%
Kingston upon Hull East Boro Const100.00%0.00%0.00%
Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle Boro Const100.00%0.00%0.00%
Na h-Eileanan an Iar Co Const100.00%0.00%0.00%
Haltemprice and Howden Co Const96.77%3.23%0.00%
Beverley and Holderness Co Const95.74%4.26%0.00%
Central Devon Co Const95.24%4.76%0.00%
Montgomeryshire Co Const95.00%5.00%0.00%
Kingston upon Hull North Boro Const94.29%5.71%0.00%
Berwick-upon-Tweed Co Const93.55%6.45%0.00%
North Cornwall Co Const89.66%10.34%0.00%
North Norfolk Co Const89.47%10.53%0.00%
Derbyshire Dales Co Const88.89%11.11%0.00%
Harwich and North Essex Co Const88.24%11.76%0.00%
Thirsk and Malton Co Const88.24%11.76%0.00%
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale Co Const88.00%12.00%0.00%
Carmarthen East and Dinefwr Co Const87.50%12.50%0.00%
Delyn Co Const87.50%12.50%0.00%
Ynys Mon Co Const87.50%12.50%0.00%
North Herefordshire Co Const87.10%12.90%0.00%
Ross, Skye and Lochaber Co Const86.96%13.04%0.00%
Forest of Dean Co Const86.84%13.16%0.00%
Louth and Horncastle Co Const86.84%10.53%2.63%
Ludlow Co Const85.71%14.29%0.00%
Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire Co Const84.38%15.63%0.00%

The Red, Amber, Green columns are the percentage of each constituency unlikely, possibly, or probably a target for investment in “superfast” broadband.

There are, according to the DCLG model, 56 constituencies where they don’t expect any investment including the Speaker’s constituency in Buckingham. The leaders of the three main parties do better:

  • Gordon Brown – 50% of his Kirkcaldy constituency is likely to see investment
  • David Cameron – 55% of his Witney constituency is likely to see investment but the largely rural areas outside the market town won’t
  • Nick Clegg – 90% of his Sheffield constituency is likely to see investment, not least through the Digital Region project

As for the candidates who may be responsible for digital policy after the :

  • Stephen Timms serves one the hottest broadband constituencies in the UK – East Ham is 100% Green
  • and ’s Surrey and Oxfordshire constituencies are both good in parts but rural areas mean broadband have’s and have not’s
  • Lynne Featherstone, chair of the Lib Dems Technology Board, serves another hot broadband area – Wood Green in London is 100% Green

Other names of note on the list include:

  • Social media convert John Presctott and Home Secretary, Alan Johnson appear at 2 and 3 on the list of notspots due to the peculiarity of Hull
  • East Yorkshire Tory MP and civil liberties campaigner, David Davis is 5th on the list with just 3% of his constituency possibly a target of investment
  • Liberal cheeky-boy Lembit Opik and past leader Charles Kennedy are high on the list because they serve rural areas of Wales and Scotland
  • Alex Salmond, leader of the SNP’s (who don’t mention broadband in their ) serves the 27th least popular target for broadband investment
  • And leader of Plaid in Westminster, Elfyn Llwyd tops the list of NGA notpsots in the DCLG model as the constituency least likely to see broadband investment

To see how your constituency fairs, download the full list here in CSV format.

Think broadband’s important for the next Government? Click here for a quick breakdown of the main parties views on technology.

Dwyfor Meirionnydd Co Const100.00%0.00%0.00%
Kingston upon Hull East Boro Const100.00%0.00%0.00%
Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle Boro Const100.00%0.00%0.00%
Na h-Eileanan an Iar Co Const100.00%0.00%0.00%
Haltemprice and Howden Co Const96.77%3.23%0.00%
Beverley and Holderness Co Const95.74%4.26%0.00%
Central Devon Co Const95.24%4.76%0.00%
Montgomeryshire Co Const95.00%5.00%0.00%
Kingston upon Hull North Boro Const94.29%5.71%0.00%
Berwick-upon-Tweed Co Const93.55%6.45%0.00%
North Cornwall Co Const89.66%10.34%0.00%
North Norfolk Co Const89.47%10.53%0.00%
Derbyshire Dales Co Const88.89%11.11%0.00%
Harwich and North Essex Co Const88.24%11.76%0.00%
Thirsk and Malton Co Const88.24%11.76%0.00%
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale Co Const88.00%12.00%0.00%
Carmarthen East and Dinefwr Co Const87.50%12.50%0.00%
Delyn Co Const87.50%12.50%0.00%
Ynys Mon Co Const87.50%12.50%0.00%
North Herefordshire Co Const87.10%12.90%0.00%
Ross, Skye and Lochaber Co Const86.96%13.04%0.00%
Forest of Dean Co Const86.84%13.16%0.00%
Louth and Horncastle Co Const86.84%10.53%2.63%
Ludlow Co Const85.71%14.29%0.00%
Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire Co Const84.38%15.63%0.00%

50p gone – so what next?

Published on April 7, 2010 in Adrian's tech blog. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Today (7 April), in the wash-up leading to the , the scrapped plans for the 50p levy on all phone lines designed to help fund next generation in the “final third” – those areas of the UK least likely to see traditional commercial investment in telecommunications. I’ve struggled with this for a long time, in two minds about whether it was the right approach – top down centralist model versus more local models.

One thing is clear though – the broadband issue has not gone away. In a recent industry forum it was suggested by experiences gained across Europe that the UK is at least 5 years behind Europe in investing in next generation broadband – this hasn’t changed in a week. And the cause for the Final Third First campaign hasn’t weakened overnight. There is still a very real and urgent need to see investment in telecommunications infrastructure in the UK – and not just in the most difficult to reach areas.

I don’t accept that its realistic to simply wait for the market to wake up to the opportunity – the Caio Review laid out a long list of reasons why this wasn’t likely to happen organically in the UK, and few of these barriers have been overcome since its publication.

While there are clear differences in the approaches of the main political parties leading up to the election, the need for strategic leadership (above public cash) is more important than ever if the UK is to begin to catch up with the European economies we compete with.

If public money isn’t going to be used to see investment unlocked (which I have no issue with) what is going to replace it?

In much of Europe, progress can be put down to strategic leadership. Where public money has been used, its typically invested based on a solid business case – improvement in public services, doing more for less. This was very much the message Sir Peter Gershon championed when he studied the efficiency of public spending. Now he’s as much a Conservative asset the existing Government’s perhaps we may see some movement here from both parties but it would be good to know what we might expect – broadband investment is a long, slow process which needs stability and vision over hype and vagueness.

In the build up to the 2010 Election there is a much needed opportunity to demonstrate the kind of strategic leadership which has seen investment unlocked in many parts of Europe, that a future government understands what is needed to get the UK back on the road to technology leadership – a path we lost some time ago.

Both the Labour Party and the Conservatives have respected senior people who understand this space – Stephen Timms was writing about broadband before most of us had heard of it, and the team of and together understand the impact not investing will have on the creative industries and our rural economies. (Ed and a newly elected David Cameron helped broadband efforts in Oxfordshire the first time around).

The scrapping of the 50p levy isn’t worrying in itself - the lack of a clear vision for the technological future of Britain is. Its not often we get politicians who understand this sector, so please let them tell us what they think that future looks like.

Ask JON to fund it

Published on March 7, 2010 in Adrian's tech blog. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

After a series of blog articles on how the move to a Thinking Cloud may impact the way the telecommunications market might be structured I wanted to start to consider how the market might be used to unlock investments and start to build some momentum in the UK so we might realistically consider target inclusion in the 2010/1 to the Home League tables recently posted.

Given the newness of the market idea for telecommunications I fully accept that what follows may be an expression of hope over expectation but it is, I hope, a flow of thought which begins to demonstrate that alternative ways of doing what we’ve always done can begin to unlock new potential. My own philosophy is that when you meet a blockage, first try to remove it; if that’s not possible work around it – never try to work with an obstacle as you’re more likely to compound the problem.

If the traditional operators can’t find a case for investing at a level required by society and the economy then we need to remove the blockages or work around them. What would be damaging would be to accept the blockage as a fact of life and to invest in it. As was deployed the first time around there were local interventions that tried to build confidence in a new market, removing the blocks to investment, and there were others which simply accepted the problem and subsidised network builds. In the former examples, the business case was ultimately made and the long-term cost to the public purse was marginal. The latter, however, tied public funds into sometimes unsustainable projects which only continued as long as the lifeline existed.

The funding requirement for next generation broadband is of an order of magnitude more – its simply not possible to provide small scale funding to prop up a marginal business case and expect high-speed broadband of the kind seen in other countries to appear across the UK. The problem won’t go away by plastering over it and the impact of doing so could make the collapse of the telecoms bubble a decade ago look like a sneeze.

One way of working around the blockage, of finding a new way of doing things, is to use the power of the markets. I first wrote a briefing document on this almost 4 years ago with my colleague Brian Condon but since then we have seen too much turmoil in the financial markets for the similes used then to make it happy reading – but the principles remain true.

When we first considered the shape of a wholesale market for telecommunications the output seemed strange – by simply replacing the occurrences of words like “ducts” with items available in other markets the document made sense. After more time in a dark room with cold towels wrapped around our heads we came to obvious conclusion that it was the structure of the telecoms industry which was wrong and not the concept of an open wholesale market; we’re just so accustomed to a single way of doing things where an incumbent operator and an interventionist regulator dominate the market. But it needn’t be like that.

So how could a wholesale market solve the broadband investment dilemma?

Let’s take the public money currently available for broadband investment. Setting aside any views on whether the 50p tax on phone lines is helpful, I’m assuming for this article its a reality and it will raise something like £150m to 175m each year for the term of the next – total fund of up to £1bn. If its spent as a direct injection into broadband infrastructure programmes then the money will achieve very little and the funding will come on stream too slowly to build any momentum  - and perhaps most damagingly there is a real risk that it won’t remove or by-pass the investment obstacles so it may become the prop for a broken business case.

In contrast,  offering the cash to the nascent market as a “future guaranteed order” for access to homes and businesses for the delivery of government services then the fund is being used to help transform the delivery of public services while also providing the telecommunications industry with the certainty it needs to invest. Rather than releasing £150m of funding each year to prop up projects, offer on the new wholesale market an order for VLAN connections to 1,000,000 homes at £10 per month for the next five years in the geographies demanded by public services and which the markets won’t automatically deliver.

By doing this through the marketplace, the funding is targeted to where its needed, with a public audit trail of delivery, and it mandates standards since membership of the market necessitates them. In taking a contract, a network operator will have a guaranteed demand over and above what they might expect from simply offering faster connections; something European projects have been able to take to the bank to secure funding. Anchor tenants in the form of housing associations are not unusual in The Netherlands, for example, but this mechanism allows any public services, central or local, to fulfil the same role. The use of the levy in this way is no more than transition funding to provide network builders with a guaranteed tenant and public services like the NHS with access to infrastructure  beyond their current funding streams.

Taking the NHS as the example, they would be able to start offering secure and reliable tele-medicine and independent living technologies enabling people to stay in their homes longer through a nationally agreed framework without additional pressure to them. Imagine adding to the “choose and book” system an option to pick your convalescence after an operation, and opting for “home-based care” automatically provisions a VLAN to your home in parallel to any other services you may have, and by the time you get home the technology is installed and working to help you recover in a more friendly environment and at a lower cost to the public purse.

Similarly in education, enabling the current learning platforms to reach the homes of children through an eGovernment VLAN ensures that that the social impacts of the digital divide are side-stepped while underpinning the safety of our children.

During the transition, public services would need to be remoulded around more flexible delivery of services so that their finances and organisations will be sufficiently restructured  they can pick up the on-going (and reduced) cost of delivering tailored services directly to people.

This kind of approach can’t happen without the existence of a wholesale market for telecommunications with its points allowing widespread delivery of services over a fragmented patchwork of network infrastructures - but I hope it also begins to shine some light on the benefits of such a fundamental change in the way we do things.

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